Pirate Ship Fulfillment

Pirate Ship has no public API, so postage can't be purchased programmatically. The platform instead automates everything around that manual buy step: it prepares a mapped, address-verified import file, and it imports Pirate Ship's tracking export back to close the loop. The result is the most hands-off workflow that still uses your negotiated Pirate Ship rates.

The workflow

1. Open an order (or the Ship Orders queue at /admin/shipping).
2. The system cross-references the shipping address against the carrier network and auto-computes the parcel — total weight from the ordered products plus packaging, and a box size chosen from the item count. You can edit weight and dimensions before exporting.
3. Click Export to Pirate Ship (single order) or Export selected / all (queue) to download a Pirate Ship import CSV.
4. Drag the CSV into pirateship.com. Pirate Ship maps the columns the first time and remembers the mapping. Buy and print the labels at your rates.
5. In Pirate Ship, export the shipments (the tracking spreadsheet), then use Import tracking CSV in the Ship Orders queue. Every matching order is marked Shipped with its tracking number, and the shipped email is sent.

Import file columns

The export writes one row per shipment with these headers (Pirate Ship accepts any headers and maps them on first import):

Order, Name, Company, Email, Phone, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Zip, Country, Weight (lb), Weight (oz), Length (in), Width (in), Height (in), Items.

The Order column carries the order number — keep it in Pirate Ship's export so the tracking import can match shipments back to orders.

Parcel calculation

• Weight = sum of each product's weight × quantity + packaging tare, rounded up to the nearest ounce. A product with no weight falls back to a default per-unit weight.
• Dimensions = the largest per-product box when products carry their own length/width/height; otherwise a standard box picked from the total unit count.

Set accurate weights and dimensions in the product editor for the most accurate Pirate Ship rates and to reduce manual edits at export time.

Address verification

Before a single-order export, the shipping address is verified against the carrier network. The dialog shows one of: verified, address adjusted (deliverable with corrections), not verified, or skipped (when SHIPPING_API_KEY isn't configured). Verification never blocks export — Pirate Ship also validates addresses on import.

Key Files